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Batarian Hegemony
Batarian Hegemony, officially known as the Hegemonic Kingdoms of Bata is the governing bodies of the Batarian space. The Batarian interstellar state was bordered by the Federation to the North East and the Traverse to the North West. It was a recognized state by the Citadel Council, with Khar'shan as the state's capital and most developed metropolitan planet of the Hegemony space. History When the batarians achieved spaceflight, they discovered concealed Prothean ruins on Bira, a moon of Verush, that allowed them to develop FTL travel. It is a batarian point of pride that, since the ruins were damaged by earthquakes, they had less information to go on than other spacefaring races. The Citadel Council granted the batarians an embassy on the Citadel sometime after the volus did, approximately a century after the batarians and Council had made first contact. Despite being welcomed into the galactic community, batarian aggression provoked several crises in galactic relations over the years. Sometime around 1785 CE, a batarian fleet bombarded the salarian colony world of Mannovai; in 1913, the Batarian Hegemony annexed the independent asari colony of Esan; and in 2115, Citadel forces skirmished with batarian forces on the planet Enael. In recent years, due to the sudden entry of the Terran Federation as a new interstellar superpower, and the formation of the Systems Alliance on the galactic stage, a brewing crisis between the Federation and the Hegemony had been speeding to the forefront of the galaxy. This at first culminated into several border incidents over the control of the Traverse. The Hegemony itself, like the Federation and the Alliance, claimed its possession to a large region of unoccupied space in the Traverse, which including some recently established human colonies before contact. Government The Batarian Hegemony was an autocratic empire under the regime of absolute control of a Hegemon through hereditary lines. Its caste system consisted of three primary layers of hierarchy: the aristocracy (Sky to Mountain), the middle merchant classes (Hills and Plains), and the slave class(Mud to Cave). The empire was comprised of hundreds of smaller kingdom states, from small acre large fiefdoms, to massive merchant republics. The rest of the galaxy viewed the batarians as an ignorable problem. Their government, known as the Batarian Hegemony, was quite hostile towards the Federation, but beneath the notice of the powerful Council races. It's not known what the average batarian thought about their enforced isolation, as the Department of Information Control ensured that only government-approved news entered or left batarian space. Given the batarian government's autarchic nature, their society was often regarded as an oppressive dictatorship, although the batarian homeworld of Khar'shan remains divided into various competing nation-states, from Kingdoms to Merchant Republics even after full occupation from the Terran Federation. The Hegemony blamed humanity for their recent troubles and claim they were forced to fend for themselves, despite the fact that their exile became largely self-imposed. This had resulted in humans receiving the brunt of batarians' antagonism in the form of scams, slave raids, and terrorist attacks, incidents which the Hegemony covertly supports but was always quick to publicly distance itself from before its occupation. Culture Society Batarians place an extremely high value on social caste and appearance, and overstepping one's place is frowned upon. Effective caste status can be bought on an ongoing basis like a subscription service, allowing the buyer to worm their way into the elite circles of batarian society given enough funds. Casting aspersions on the monetary worth of a social better is considered a serious insult. Batarians strongly believe that species with fewer than four eyes are less intelligent; they often gain the upper hand in interspecies arguments because other races find it difficult to know which eyes to focus on when speaking to them. There are twenty castes, from highest to lowest: Heavens, Cloud, Peak, Mountain, Plateau, Mountain Lesser, Foot hill, Hill, Priarie, Plains, Beach, Sea, River, Swamp, Salt Sea, Mud, Gull, Ravine, Cavern, Cave. Slavery is an integral part of the batarian caste system, despite being illegal according to Council law. The custom is so deeply ingrained in batarian culture that batarians consider the Council's anti-slavery standing to be discriminatory. Rogue batarian slave rings are feared throughout the galaxy, especially among colonists on remote worlds, which are often raided by batarian slavers. Victims of such raids are usually implanted with control devices in their skulls, a painful operation since the slavers rarely make use of anesthetic. The batarians are also known to enslave addicts of the biotic drug red sand when they can no longer afford to support their habit. Both of these methods are quite costly and dangerous, as the implantation process can be often fatal if performed improperly, and many Red Sand dealers will often kill known slavers for impeding business and endangerment by proximity. Body language is an important part of batarian society. For example, tilting one's head to the left is a sign of admiration and respect. When a batarian tilts their head to the right, however, it is a sign that they consider themselves to be superior to the person whom the gesture was directed towards. Therefore, this gesture can easily be interpreted as an insult by batarians due to the high value that they place on social caste. Religion Little is known about batarian religious beliefs. However it is noted that batarians do believe in an afterlife. When a batarian dies, his soul leaves the body through the eyes. Treatment of the corpse is considered unimportant, unless the batarian's eyes have been removed before or after death. Such treatment was commonplace by Terran Federation soldiers dealing with slavers, as before execution they would be blinded and summarily executed by firing squad or hanging. It suggests that the batarians' religious beliefs are based on words from sacred texts, most notably the Pillars of Strength scroll, similar to some human religions such as Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam. Economy The Batarians have maintained one of the most closed and centralized economies in the galaxy since their contact with the Council. For centuries, it is still a society based around chattel slavery. Extensive trade with other Citadel states allowed their economy to improve rapidly. Systematic inefficiency is always a common problem, when the economy shifted from the extensive to the intensive development stage. The shortage of skilled labor, energy and transportation infrastructure significantly impeded industrial growth and resulted in constant failure to meet their economic objectives and quotas. The major slowdown of the economy contrasted with the Terran Federation, which surpassed the Hegemony in terms of absolute GDP and per capita income by 2668 GS. The Hegemony still declared its four-year economic plan in order to compete with the Federation, but the results only saw marginal improvements and still lagged far behind the two rising human interstellar states in the Citadel. Military Little is known about the batarian military. Citadel sanctions have left the Batarian Hegemony a paper tiger of an empire, one that was reduced to the level of guerrilla warfare instead of the great wars of its hayday a century ago by the time the Federation initiated its final occupation stages. By 2660, when colonization of the Skyllian Verge began, batarian military capacity had apparently weakened to the point that they were unable to prevent human expansion, which was further inflicted previously by the post third Bug War Federation being granted equal colonization rights to the region. The Batarian Hegemony does not trust private industry to create their military hardware. Most batarian military hardware is produced by a corporation called Batarian State Arms, a vast nationalized institution infamous for its waste and corruption. It produces various offensive and defensive products that are sold primarily in the Terminus Systems. The batarian fleet is known to operate at least four super dreadnoughts of their own indigenous design, the Eeluram-class Super Dreadnoughts; as a non-Citadel race, they are not bound by the Treaty of Farixen and may have more. They also field smaller vessels, including the Hensa class of cruisers. Given one member of this class was twenty years old in 2663, however, the batarians may have retired the Hensa class from active service by this time. The Hegemony is also infamous for the creation of a type of warships known as "Large Cruisers", these ship sizes varied between Heavy Cruiser and Dreadnought, with armor on par with Heavy Cruisers and firepower of the latter, albeit, they were not categorized as proper capital ships, primarily rapid refit vessels that perform merchant marine duties in times of peace, thus they bypassed the Shanxi Treaty as a loophole. The Batarians built these Cruisers to counter the numerical inferiority in Fleet sizes to their rivals, most notably the Alliance and the Federation. While their protection is inferior to the larger Federation Fast Battleships, these ships are more than capable of their "cruiser killer" role and could provide additional fire support thanks to their battleship-caliber artillery in a hit-and-run attack on enemy convoys alongside the smaller frigates. The batarian military has a special forces division known as the Special Intervention Unit. All that is known about the SIU is that their training program is brutal. After the Blue Suns hired a group of former SIU operatives to run a hostile environment training camp on the planet Xetic, an investigation by Illium authorities into the camp found that the mortality rate was as high as 18%; an independent Blue Suns inquiry found that the batarian operatives' harsh training techniques were consistent with those employed in the SIU training program, and promptly fired the trainers for incompetence for allowing such unacceptable waste. Other known branches of the batarian military include the Batarian External Forces, their primary special forces branch, who earned the title "Pathkillers". Category:Terran Federation:Contact Category:Governments Category:Background Category:Factions